Last January, I went on a complete frenzy and read 18 books. The following month, however, I calmed down and relaxed with 6. Here are my short reviews for each of the books I read last February and as usual, I hope you can come away with ideas for your own to-be-read pile. Or at the very least, inspire you to read if you’ve been meaning to pick up a book!
FICTION
1. Get a Life, Chloe Brown, by Talia Hibbert (UK)
Chloe Brown makes a bucket list to “get a life” after almost dying one day, then enlists the help of her neighbor to accomplish her goals. This is a pretty standard romantic comedy novel, but the male protagonist here has been one of the most vulnerable and sweet leads I’ve read about thus far!
Get a Life has an excellent representation for the disabled community, as the female protagonist lives with chronic pain and the reader gets a better understanding of what living with that condition must feel like. With this, Get a Life reinforced the message that you don’t have to change who you are or what you need for someone else; if they really care about you, they should accommodate your needs!
2. A Single Man, by Christopher Isherwood (UK/USA)
George’s partner recently died and the aftermath is eerily…mundane. This is what George grapples with in 1950’s Los Angeles. One of the novel’s main themes is Otherness because unlike the others around him, George is old, gay, and British. As a result, he always puts on a show. A Single Man is also a philosophical meditation on loss and loneliness, at the same time a contemplation on modernity and being in the minority.
I can see how this novel won’t be appreciated universally, however, as the plot is slow and nothing really happens. The ambiance is bleak and evokes a strong sense of boredom with the rhythm of the world. But perhaps that is the whole point of the novel too.
3. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid (USA)
What a devastating book. There always seems to be one book I read a month that makes me cry, and it’s this one for February. This novel is a historical fiction about Hollywood A-lister Evelyn Hugo’s life, told through a biography. Reid has such a good grasp on the complexity of people. Trying to understand Evelyn Hugo made my brain hurt because of how nuanced, complex, and therefore real she is. There were so many gray areas in her morality, decision-making, and opinions, and honestly this is how characters should be written, because this is how people really are.
I really don’t want to give anything away, so I will leave you with this. This novel is totally not what I expected it to be, and it’s the epitome of the famous saying, “The personal is the political.”
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4. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (UK)
The ideas in this novel are so rich and so thought-provoking! This novel will stick with me, especially because Huxley’s predictions are mostly applicable to modern society. BNW discusses mass production, consumerism, pacification, and mindless entertainment–things we deal with right now.
However, I didn’t really like the experience of reading through the story; I really only liked this book insofar as the ideas it gave me. It was also a product of its time, so this book contains a lot of racism. I recommend Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman more than this one, as Postman’s biting criticism of modern mass media contains roughly the same ideas as BNW.
5. After I Do, by Taylor Jenkins Reid (USA)
Lauren and Ryan are married, but they have fallen out of love and cannot stand each other anymore. I love reading stories about what relationships really are like, instead of what they should be like, and this book falls in the former. After I Do thus presents complex and well-articulated ideas about what it means to “need someone,” and made me think a lot.
Though I liked the ideas, I didn’t like the way they were told through the story. It was so palpable to me that the story was engineered to deliver the messages it did. In other words, it wasn’t subtle about its lessons at all, and I wish it was.
NONFICTION
6. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb (USA)
Gottlieb pulls back the curtains on what it’s like being a psychotherapist, as well as going to therapy herself. In my opinion, this is an essential guide on understanding people. It’s so difficult not to humanize people–not to see them as whole beings–after reading this book. It encourages you to be kinder to yourself and others around you, and to be more patient when it comes to understanding yourself and others. The psychological insights here are just so helpful and practical, and the closing chapters made me tear up.
Absolutely everyone should read this! Everyone’s a human, and we interact with other humans everyday. Gottlieb makes psychology so accessible to understand, and I suspect people who love stories and story-telling will appreciate this book the most.
That’s it for now. Happy reading!
